What is the Role of Nature in Outdoor Education?

What is the role of nature in outdoor education? The role
that the natural environment can or should play in outdoor, adventure, and
environmental education provokes a wide and deep range of views.

As the environmental movement has unfolded in the face of
increasing ecological disasters in recent decades, it has in turn caused
considerable new changes and questions about how outdoor education is to
function and what, indeed, it should be trying to do.

In general, it is fair to say that outdoor education programs of
today, are considerably more "environmentally conscious" or "eco-friendly" than
were programs prior to 1980's. But the question as to what exactly outdoor
education should be teaching students about the natural world and the human
relationship with that world, remains very much up for grabs.

In this respect,
two major positions about the role of wilderness in outdoor education are
evident:

Pro-Wilderness: The role of wilderness is
viewed as critical
and essential to outdoor education; nature itself is believed to have
beneficial effects (often considered to be powerful or potentially
transformative); the mountains have a power which speaks for itself (or at
least when we learn how to listen; see Are the Mountains
Still Speaking for Themselves?)

Anti-Wilderness: The role of wilderness in outdoor
education is less important than the roles played by the adventure
activities themselves, the facilitator, the group, and the participant
themselves. In other words, outdoor education program effects can
largely be replicated in non-wilderness settings using adventure-based
principles and non-wilderness based adventure activities. What's more,
indoor and urban-based adventure programming is cheaper and more accessible to
the majority of human populations, in cities.

Those who side with the view that outdoor education should be
closely tied to environmental education and that programs should endeavour to
bring participants into a closer and more caring relationship with nature will
find much reward in the work that has emerged in Australia over the past 10 or
so years, particularly from the Outdoor Education & Nature Tourism Department at
LaTrobe University (see
list of
recent publications).